| eFootball | |
| Italic Title: | no |
| Developer: | Konami |
| Publisher: | Konami |
| Series: | eFootball |
| Engine: | Unreal Engine 4 |
| Genre: | Sports |
| Modes: | Single-player, multiplayer |
eFootball is a series of association football simulation video games developed and published by Konami. It has been completely rebranded from the original Pro Evolution Soccer (known as Winning Eleven in Japan) series.[1] The game's first year, entitled eFootball 2022, was released on 30 September 2021. It was later changed to the game's second year, eFootball 2023, on August 25, 2022 and the game's third year, eFootball 2024 on September 7, 2023. This game is part of the International Esports Federation's World Championship and North and Eastern Europa League (NEEC).
On 21 July 2021, Konami released a six-minute video revealing the new game.[2] The announcement revealed that the Pro Evolution Soccer brand had been dropped.[3]
The game was released on PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Microsoft Windows, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S on 30 September 2021.[4] It was built using Unreal Engine 4 for the first time in the franchise.[5]
On 8 October 2021, Konami announced that it would release a new update with fixes for the game's issues on 28 October 2021.[6] The update was delayed and the release postponed to November 2021.[7] Konami then launched the update 0.9.1 on 5 November,[8] and announced that the 1.0 update release was delayed until Spring 2022.[9] Version 1.0.0 of eFootball 2022 was finally announced on 6 April 2022, with release date on 14 April 2022.[10]
On 31 May 2022, Konami announced their roadmap for the rest of 2022 up until 2023 for features such as Master League and the number of teams that can be used in offline mode which will all be released as paid content.[11] However, as of May 2024, features such as Master League and Edit Mode have not been released on PC or consoles, and no further announcements have been made by Konami.
At launch, eFootball 2022 was panned by critics and players, who criticized the "atrocious" graphics, lack of content, laggy engine and finicky controls.[12] With 92% negative reviews, it became the worst-rated game on Steam a day after launch,[13] and the lowest-rated game of 2021 on the review aggregator Metacritic.[14] Konami later apologised for the game's many issues and said they would work on improving it.[15] A major "1.0" update, that aimed to address many of these issues, was released 14 April 2022 on PC and consoles.[16]
| Title | First release | Version number(s)[17] | 8th Gen | 9th gen | PC | Handheld | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| colspan-"1" | eFootball 2022 | 30 September 2021 | PS4, Xbox One | Windows | Android, Apple iOS | |||
| eFootball 2023 | 25 August 2022 | (8 June 2023) | PS4, Xbox One | Windows | Android, Apple iOS | |||
| eFootball 2024 | 7 September 2023 | (11 July 2024) | PS4, Xbox One | Windows | Android, Apple iOS | |||